Do I even want to take a puff?
The Democratic leadership of the Massachusetts House of Representatives is set to release an overhaul of the voter-passed marijuana legalization law Wednesday, with the full 160-member chamber expected to vote on the bill Thursday.
What the rewrite will do remains opaque. Even though the Legislature’s committee on marijuana policy has been working on the issue for months and has held several public hearings, it has not yet released any draft language.
That’s unusual even by the secretive standards of the Massachusetts Legislature because lawmakers are tinkering with a ballot question passed by more than 1.8 million voters in November.
After the House passes its version of the bill, it will go to the Senate, where it’s likely to be changed, perhaps substantially. Lawmakers hope to have a final compromise bill on Governor Charlie Baker’s desk by the end of the month.
Meanwhile, closed-door discussions about the marijuana law were heating up Monday on Beacon Hill. A regularly scheduled afternoon meeting between Baker, Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg, House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, and top aides was canceled at the behest of the speaker’s office, according to DeLeo spokesman Seth Gitell. He said the House used that time to work on the omnibus marijuana legislation and other matters.
Creating a new oversight regime for a drug that had been illegal for more than 105 years will be a massive enterprise — from determining who is qualified to work in pot shops to setting potency limits on cannabis-infused candy and cookies, but none of that can happen until the Legislature finalizes the state’s new marijuana law, and the clock is ticking.
The November referendum legalized growing, buying, possessing, and using limited amounts of cannabis for adults 21 or over. It set a January 2018 time frame for retail pot shops to open, but, in the quiet week after Christmas, with no public hearings and no formal public notice, lawmakers delayed the likely opening date for recreational marijuana stores in Massachusetts by half a year — to July 2018.
Possible changes that could come out of the Legislature include raising the tax on retail marijuana sales, clarifying language about how cities and towns can ban pot facilities, and changing the makeup of the agency that will oversee pot sales.
Under the voter-passed law, the pot tax rate is 3.75 percent — in addition to the state’s 6.25 percent sales tax, and municipalities can impose an additional 2 percent tax. That would mean a $100 pot brownie purchase could carry a state and local tax of $12.
Current law says that if municipal officials want to stop a particular type of establishment — for example, marijuana cultivation facilities — or all retail pot establishments, they must go to their voters. Local officials also need to hold a referendum if they want to sharply limit the number of marijuana shops. If a city has 100 retail stores that sell alcohol, for example, it will need to go to voters if it wants fewer than 20 marijuana retailers.
The Legislature could change that, giving more power to local elected officials, and the ballot language calls for a three-person Cannabis Control Commission appointed by the treasurer with sole regulatory authority over the new industry. The treasurer’s office already houses the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, which was a main reason the authors of the marijuana law placed the marijuana watchdog under the treasurer’s authority, but some lawmakers are keen to change that structure because they feel it gives too much authority to one official. That could mean expanding the oversight board to five people with some members appointed by other statewide officials, such as the attorney general.
Beyond Massachusetts, voters in seven other states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational use, but the drug remains strictly forbidden under federal law.
--more--"
Related: A 28 percent tax on marijuana? That’s the plan under the latest bill
House leaders will unveil a bill Wednesday that would more than double the total tax on recreational marijuana and give municipal officials — instead of local voters — the power to ban cannabis shops and farms. The legislation marks an extraordinary break with the 1.8 million Massachusetts voters who legalized marijuana through last year’s ballot. The voter-passed initiative calls for a 3.75 percent state tax and 2 percent local option tax on pot sales, in addition to Massachusetts’ 6.25 percent sales tax. That’s 12 percent in total. Under the House proposal, which is expected to be voted on and amended on Thursday, the total tax would be 28 percent. The math: 6.25 percent sales tax, a 16.75 percent state pot tax, and a mandatory 5 percent local tax that would go to city and town coffers.
That pile of money they thought they $melled just went up in smoke!
So the bill they have been working on behind closed doors in a smoke-filled room to thwart the will of the voters has turned into a light bag that costs too much. Meanwhile, they are taking the decision of where to locate out of the hands of the voters and giving it to the city and town fathers who are much more pliable via lobbying loot.
Is that Massachusetts democracy? Or can we finally get past the sham regarding the imagery and illusion of liberal, deep-blue Massachusetts?
Won't matter anyway. Feds are going to make sick people suffer even more.
Time to get back to $moke-filled room:
"In a sweeping rewrite of the voter-passed marijuana legalization measure, House leaders will advance a bill Wednesday that would more than double the total tax on recreational pot and give municipal officials — instead of local voters — the power to ban cannabis shops and farms. The legislation immediately faced blowback from advocates, who said “it insults voters,” and from elected officials, who said the bill would ensure that the illicit market would continue, but it drew praise from a key lobbyist for cities and towns...."
"House leaders pull controversial pot bill hours before vote" by Joshua Miller Globe Staff June 14, 2017
House leaders abruptly yanked a controversial rewrite of the voter-approved recreational marijuana law Wednesday afternoon — just hours before it was scheduled to be debated by the full chamber.
“It will not be taken up tomorrow,” Speaker Robert A. DeLeo told reporters after breaking the news to the Democratic members of the House in a closed-door evening meeting. He cited “procedural issues” and “certain things we have to clear up,” without going into more detail.
“It’s important that, with a bill of this magnitude, that we try to get it right, or as close as right the first time. And so I’d rather do that than try to rush it through tomorrow,” he said.
The unusual move followed 24 hours of lacerating criticism from advocates and lawmakers who said the bill would have undermined the will of the 1.8 million voters who backed the legalization measure in November. They decried the higher pot tax it would have imposed — at least 28 percent — saying that rate would ensure the black market for marijuana remained.
DeLeo’s announcement immediately raised questions about whether lawmakers will be able to forge an agreement on a revised pot law by their self-imposed deadline of June 30 and send it to Governor Charlie Baker. DeLeo said the House would vote on a tweaked version of the bill next week and he expected lawmakers to meet the deadline.
House leaders will unveil a bill Wednesday that would more than double the total tax on recreational marijuana.
In December, the Legislature delayed the opening of recreational retail stores by six months — to July 2018 — to give itself time to rewrite the ballot law. Failing to do so before next month could further delay the opening of pot shops.
Advocates and people in the cannabis industry cheered DeLeo’s move.
They are “happy,” it is good news?????
What are they smoking?
Interviews with lawmakers Wednesday offered a glimpse at some of the reasons why the bill may have been pulled.
Representative Russell E. Holmes, a Mattapan Democrat and a member of the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus, said “the language is very heavy-handed to communities of color,” and would “exacerbate the war on drugs just as you’re making marijuana legal.”
Another area of concern, he said, is the high tax rate, which he worries would leave the illicit market in place — or perhaps even encourage it to grow, and he expressed disappointment that there isn’t language removing past marijuana charges from people’s criminal records.
Finally, Holmes said, he wanted to make sure there are resources to help communities that were disproportionately affected by the “war on drugs.”
He said “by no means” was he the only representative to feel that way about those provisions.
Earlier Wednesday, the state Senate’s point person on marijuana policy, Senator Patricia D. Jehlen, blasted the House bill, saying it directly assaults the will of the voters and is a prescription for increasing the illicit market.”
“This bill is fundamentally flawed,” Jehlen said, as the House chair of the committee, Representative Mark J. Cusack, sat next to her shaking his head.
The House bill, made public Tuesday night, would have raised the total recreational pot tax, now set at a maximum of 12 percent, to a mandatory 28 percent at the point of sale.
Jehlen and several outside lawyers said the bill’s language also imposed a 21.75 percent tax on wholesale transactions — such as pot growers who sell their product to retailers, costs that would inevitably be passed on to consumers. But House leaders said that was not the legislation’s intent, and Cusack told reporters late Wednesday that, regarding the wholesale tax, “we are currently working on a fix, among other issues.”
Ten members of the joint House-Senate committee on marijuana policy voted Wednesday to advance the bill out of committee with a favorable report. One lawmaker voted against advancing it, and six “reserved their rights,” meaning they declined to vote for or against advancing the measure, but even one of the representatives who voted in favor of the procedural move expressed concern.
Representative Aaron Vega, a Holyoke Democrat, called the tax rate “detrimental” to a robust legal pot market and expressed worry about changing municipal control.
He said he hoped the bill could be amended on the House floor
“I will not at all hesitate to vote ‘no’ on the floor,” he said, “if this bill continues in the shape and the form that it is.”
It was pulled a few hours later....
--more--"
What other options do they have?
"Facing delay, lawmakers left with few options on pot bill" by Joshua Miller Globe Staff June 15, 2017
Massachusetts lawmakers have met the enemy, and it is them.
Top State House officials are increasingly fretful that divisions between the House and Senate could mean they won’t get a comprehensive bill to Governor Charlie Baker’s desk by the end of the month, as promised.
If they can’t, it would basically leave the Legislature with three options. Lawmakers could further delay when retail pot shops open beyond July 2018, buying more time; agree to a vastly slimmed down bill, punting on the contentious issues; or leave the current law in place, which would raise questions about the wisdom of ever trying to rewrite the law passed by 1.8 million people in the first place.
They chose door number A, “to further delay retail sales.”
Still, House leaders insist the full chamber will vote on a tweaked version next week, and that House and Senate lawmakers will send a rewrite to Baker’s desk by the end of the month, but the timeline is extremely tight.
On Thursday, insiders were buzzing about [the] “greater-than-long-shot possibility the law could proceed as it’s currently written.”
Then there’s this twist.....
Puns intended?
--more--"
They sent it over to the Senate:
"In rewrite of pot ballot question, Senate has lighter touch" by Joshua Miller and Dan Adams Globe Staff June 16, 2017
Massachusetts Senate leaders Friday unveiled a modest rewrite of the voter-approved marijuana legalization measure, setting up a pivotal showdown with the House of Representatives that will dictate how pot is grown and sold in the state.
The Senate bill would leave in place the initiative’s lower pot tax rate, and it would maintain a requirement that only voters — not municipal officials, as House leaders proposed — can ban pot shops in their city or town.
Overall, Senate officials said, they intend to more closely hew to the ballot question passed by 1.8 million Massachusetts voters in November.
Like the House plan, it would rob Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg of her unilateral oversight of the cannabis industry. The governor and attorney general would also get to appoint some of the commissioners who will write regulations on everything from neon signs in pot shop windows to the warning labels on marijuana-infused cookies, and, like the House bill, the Senate plan would merge oversight of the recreational and medical cannabis markets.
Both proposals would also create a commission to study how law enforcement can detect drivers who are high on marijuana.
If so hard to detect.... ??????
Senator Patricia D. Jehlen’s plan, like the House proposal, would leave some fundamental aspects of the ballot question in place. Growing, buying, possessing, and using limited quantities of marijuana by adults 21 and older would remain legal, and both foresee retail pot stores still opening in July 2018.
On Wednesday, Speaker Robert A. DeLeo abruptly pulled the House’s pot proposal, which drew denunciation from a wide range of critics. House lawmakers plan to vote on a revised version of that bill out of the Legislature’s marijuana committee Monday. A vote by the full House is expected later next week.
Noting that consumers regularly shop in New Hampshire to avoid Massachusetts’ 6.25 percent sales tax, Jehlen, the Senate chairwoman of the Legislature’s marijuana committee, said cannabis users will inevitably seek out the cheapest pot — even if that means buying it on the black market or from a dispensary in Maine, where the pot tax is set at 10 percent.
“The price differential matters,” she told reporters gathered in the office of Senate president Stanley C. Rosenberg. “Many people prefer a regulated product, but if the price differential is 28 percent — think about what the people you know would do. You think they’ll walk past their neighborhood dealer they’ve been buying from for years?”
The delay by the House this week has raised questions about whether lawmakers will meet their self-imposed June 30 deadline to get a bill to Governor Charlie Baker’s desk......
--more--"
Meanwhile, in Washington:
"Bill would expand attorney general’s power in drug war" Washington Post June 16, 2017
WASHINGTON — Congress is considering a bill that would expand the federal government’s ability to pursue the war on drugs, granting new power to the attorney general to set federal drug policy.
The bipartisan legislation, sponsored by powerful committee leaders in both chambers of Congress, would allow the attorney general to unilaterally outlaw certain unregulated chemical compounds on a temporary basis.
It would create a special legal category for these drugs, the first time in nearly 50 years that the Controlled Substances Act has been expanded in this way, and it would set penalties, potentially including mandatory minimum sentences, for the manufacture and distribution of these drugs.
‘‘This bill provides federal law enforcement with new tools to ensure those peddling dangerous drugs, which can be lethal, are brought to justice,’’ said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who is sponsoring the Senate version with Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa.
That's when my printed paper stopped taking them, and the Kushner crime bill certainly overrode this.
‘‘It also explicitly exempts simple possession from any penalties, instead targeting those who manufacture and traffic these drugs and opioids,’’ Feinstein said.
The bill, introduced last week, now moves to a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Grassley chairs and where Feinstein is the top-ranking Democrat.
Under current law, all psychoactive substances are placed in one of five ‘‘schedules’’ designating the drugs’ risk of abuse and medical potential. Schedule 1 is the most restrictive, reserved for drugs like LSD, heroin and marijuana. Schedule 5 is the least restrictive category, which includes medications like low-dose codeine cough syrup.
Illicit-drug manufacturers wishing to avoid these designations often make subtle changes to a drug’s chemistry, creating slightly different, and hence legal, substances which produce similar psychoactive effects in users.
‘‘Illegal drug traffickers and importers are able to circumvent the existing scheduling regime by altering a single atom or molecule of a currently controlled substance in a laboratory, thereby creating a substance that is lawful, but often highly dangerous, addictive and even deadly,’’ said Feinstein and Grassley in a fact sheet about the Senate bill.
The law would create a new schedule, Schedule A, for substances that are chemically similar to already-regulated drugs. The attorney general would be able to place new compounds in Schedule A for a period of up to five years. Critics say this amounts to giving the attorney general the power to unilaterally write federal drug policy.
The bill ‘‘gives the attorney general a ton of power in terms of scheduling drugs and pursuing penalties,’’ said Michael Collins of the Drug Policy Alliance, a drug policy reform group. ‘‘This is a giant step backwards and really it’s doing the bidding of Jeff Sessions as he tries to escalate the war on drugs.’’
Under current policy, an attorney general may only temporarily schedule a substance for up to two years, and only then after demonstrating the drug’s ‘‘history and current pattern of abuse; the scope, duration and significance of abuse; and what, if any, risk there is to the public health.’’
The new bill extends the temporary scheduling duration to five years for Schedule A substances, and eliminates the requirement for analyzing the drug’s abuse record and its potential risk to public health.
--more--"
"Editorial "Dude, don’t bogart our marijuana revenues" June 19, 2017
Paging Grover Norquist: Antitax anxiety has broken out on Beacon Hill, with some Democratic lawmakers suddenly professing concern about raising taxes on recreational marijuana as part of a needed set of reforms to the state’s new pot law. A proposal to levy a 28 percent tax on marijuana sales sparked an uproar, and House leaders suddenly yanked their version of the bill on Wednesday for further refinement, shortly before a scheduled vote. In the Senate, legislation was introduced Friday that left the tax at 12 percent, one of the lowest rates in any state that has legalized pot.
But marijuana should be taxed, good and hard. The possibility of new revenue was one of the selling points of Question 4, the successful ballot question that legalized marijuana last year. The 28 percent figure isn’t a magic number. But however legislators adjust the rate as they forge consensus on the marijuana legislation, they needn’t give too much ground to the weed industry now. Once the legal market is up and running, raising the tax will become far more difficult and an opportunity to bolster state and municipal finances will have passed.
Why? Raise 'em everywhere else without lowering despite voter's wishes. Sales tax was supposed to be rolled back, economy that gave legi$looters raise supposed to roll income tax back, but nope.
“You’d rather start high and have to come down,” said Mark J. Cusack, the House chair of the legislative Marijuana Policy Committee, who supports the 28 percent tax. From a political standpoint, he’s undoubtedly right.
How? It's the exact opposite!
As Cusack points out, there’s also a sound public policy reason to raise the tax in the way the House legislation would. The proposal would raise the component of the marijuana tax earmarked for the host town or city from 2 percent to 5 percent, a boost that is designed to incentivize municipalities to allow marijuana retail so that retailers don’t cluster in poorer communities. “Five percent, that’s real revenue,” he said: cash that it’ll be hard for even wealthy communities to turn aside. The hike addresses a legitimate worry, since 19 towns in Massachusetts have already banned or initiated bans on retail pot.
?????????????
What are they smoking?
Opponents of raising the tax haven’t offered convincing objections. Their first rationale — that 12 percent is what voters favored, so on principle the Legislature shouldn’t change it — falls flat, considering the willingness of even tax-hike opponents to alter other aspects of the marijuana law. Senator Patricia D. Jehlen cites the popular mandate when it comes to the tax rate, but her Senate bill overturns what voters supported in other ways — almost all of them for the better, including the elimination of the unfair head start that the referendum gave to medical marijuana firms. There’s nothing wrong with that, and tinkering with the tax rate would also be perfectly compatible with respecting the thrust of the voters’ will, which was to legalize marijuana.
The second justification, that the 28 percent tax would encourage the black market, seems to be scaremongering — reefer-tax madness, as it were. It’s true that all taxes encourage black markets to some extent (raise the income tax too high, and more people work under the table), but no empirical data suggests that the 28 percent versus 12 percent versus some other rate would keep crooks in business.
How insulting.
“What are the perfect rates that minimize black market issues and generate sufficient revenue?” asked Paul Seaborn, a business professor at the University of Denver who studies the marijuana industry. “No states seem to have exactly figured out these things.”
Colorado’s experience, he said, is that some users will continue to buy illegally rather than pay a premium for legal products, but that over time the advantages of a legal marketplace tip the scales. Colorado, with a combined excise, state, and local tax rate of around 30 percent, has actually exceeded its revenue estimates, and is now generating enough money through marijuana taxes to pay for the marijuana regulatory structure and leave some left over for other needs.
Revisions to the marijuana referendum that passed in November are entirely appropriate, so long as they don’t undo legalization. Whatever the final version looks like, a higher tax rate that boosts the percentage received by local governments belongs in the legislation.
--more--"
Better give it to them or they will get mad:
"Pot advocates decry House’s plans to change legalization law" by Joshua Miller Globe Staff June 19, 2017
Mellow they were not.
Massachusetts advocates who legalized recreational marijuana by ballot question seven months ago savaged a House bill that would rewrite the pot law, saying Monday that it “repeals the will of the voters.” They instead endorsed a more modest Senate effort to adjust the referendum law.
Advocates decried the higher marijuana tax rate the House legislation would impose; argued “punitive” background-check requirements for any vendor helping a pot business — from a lawyer to a snowplow driver — would make the retail system unworkable; and said giving municipal officials, instead of local voters, the power to ban cannabis shops was anti-democratic.
“The hostile approach that they take to setting up the marijuana industry is just not workable in any form, so we don’t want to see the House bill move forward,” said Jim Borghesani, who managed communications for the ballot campaign, “Yes on 4,” and who represents the national pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project.
Representative Mark J. Cusack, who authored the House bill, declined to address the substance of the criticism, but he zinged the advocates for signing on with the Senate.
“They’ve been adamant that they got [the ballot question] right, that it was the gospel according to ‘Yes on 4,’ that there should not be any changes to it,” he said.
He caustically encouraged the group and its leaders to “figure out their message.”
Yeah, if I smoked I would feel insulted but I'll just let that puff of smoke in the face go unanswered. Said he is open to compromising on the tax rate.
Cusack said the thorniest point of contention between the chambers may be who has the power to ban pot shops in each city or town: voters or their elected officials.
After all, he said, there is not much middle ground.
“Tax rates are negotiable. They come up. We come down,” he said.
“But the ballot referendum and local officials, I think that it’s kind of black-and-white on that one.”
Now he's turning it into a race issue?
The differences will be hashed out in a secret conference committee with members of both chambers.....
HA-HA-HA... ha.
--more--"
You can take it to the bank:
"Marijuana group says PNC Bank to close its accounts amid fears of a DOJ crackdown" by Nicole Lewis Washington Post June 21, 2017
WASHINGTON — One of the nation’s leading marijuana legalization groups says PNC Bank has notified it that it will close the organization’s 22-year-old accounts, a sign of growing concerns in the financial industry that the Trump administration will crack down on the marijuana industry in states that have legalized it.
The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) lobbies to eliminate punishments for marijuana use but is not involved in growing or distributing the drug - an important distinction for federally regulated banks and other institutions that do business with such advocacy groups.
Nick Field, MPP’s chief operating officer, said a PNC Bank representative told him in May that the organization’s bank accounts would be permanently closed July 7 because an audit of the organization’s accounts revealed it received funding from marijuana businesses that handle the plant directly.
‘‘They told me it is too risky. The bank can’t assume the risk,’’ Field said.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a longtime opponent of marijuana legalization. During a Senate drug hearing in April 2016, Sessions — then a Republican senator from Alabama —said, ‘‘We need grown-ups in charge in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized, it ought not to be minimized, that it’s in fact a very real danger.’’
When asked during his confirmation hearing in January whether he would enforce federal drug laws as attorney general, Sessions replied, ‘‘I won’t commit to never enforcing federal law.’’
The Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment.
Last week, Sessions wrote to congressional leaders asking for the ability to prosecute medical-marijuana dispensaries. Sessions implored members of Congress to reconsider a rule enacted in 2014 to prevent the Justice Department from using federal funds to block state laws that legalize medical-marijuana cultivation and use.
The sale of recreational marijuana, in contrast, is loosely protected by the 2013 Cole memo. The memo, issued by Deputy Attorney General James Cole during the Obama administration, instructs state law enforcement agencies not to use their resources to prosecute the authorized sale of marijuana in states where it is legal.
The vice president for regulatory compliance at the American Bankers Association says these protections are not enough reassurance for banking institutions. Banks are subject to federal regulation to prevent fraud, money-laundering, or breeches of privacy.
They will launder the loot for Mexican drug cartels, though.
‘‘Because marijuana is illegal under federal law, banks accepting any money associated with its sale could be investigated for money laundering,’’ said Rob Rowe, the ABA executive, adding that many banks do not make a distinction between advocacy organizations and businesses that sell or grow marijuana, but Field’s organization, the MPP, and many other advocacy groups, such as NORML, say banks’ concerns are overblown. The Justice Department has never investigated a bank for offering accounts to state-legal marijuana businesses. In addition, Field added, advocacy organizations are legal entities that are subject to strict scrutiny by the IRS.
‘‘We are a registered 501(c)(3) and (c)(4). We have yearly audits. We are compliant with the IRS,’’ he said. ‘‘It doesn’t get any clearer than that.’’
Field said the MPP is still seeking a new bank. John Hudak, an expert on marijuana policy and governance at the Brookings Institution, suspects the MPP’s difficulty in finding a new bank reflects banks’ fears that Sessions intends to roll back protections for the industry and enforce the federal Controlled Substances Act.....
He's gone, and Barr seems rather ambivalent about it.
--more--"
"Mass. House votes to make major changes to pot law" by Joshua Miller Globe staff June 21, 2017
The Massachusetts House of Representatives passed an expansive rewrite of the voter-approved marijuana legalization law Wednesday night — a bill that would alter major aspects of the referendum backed by 1.8 million voters just seven months ago.
The 126-to-28 vote sets up a showdown with the Senate, which is expected Thursday to greenlight a much more modest adjustment of the recreational pot law.
The House bill would sharply raise total pot taxes to a mandatory 28 percent, from a maximum of 12 percent in the ballot question. It would also give municipal officials, instead of local voters, the power to ban cannabis shops and farms from their communities.
They pulled it, then passed the same bill when you had smoke in your eye.
Discussion of the bill and proposed amendments to it unfolded mostly in secret over several hours Wednesday afternoon and evening — typical procedure in recent years for the top-down House, which is tightly controlled by Speaker Robert A. DeLeo.
Several amendments to the bill were bundled together by House leaders, effectively denying legislators the opportunity to vote on each one individually. That, too, is common for major pieces of legislation, but given that the bill in question Wednesday was a rewrite of a voter-passed law, the practice was particularly notable.
Last week, amid biting criticism from advocates, the public, and other lawmakers — as well as what House leaders acknowledged were mistakes in the drafting of the bill — DeLeo withdrew a version of the legislation from a scheduled vote, but in its broadest outlines, the legislation that passed Wednesday remained similar to the original House bill and still drew the ire of advocates.
“This bill is wrong on taxes, wrong on local control, weak on social justice, and irresponsible on regulatory efficiency. Our hope is that the Senate bill prevails in the coming conference committee,” said Jim Borghesani, who directed communications for the ballot measure and represents the national pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project.
Among other changes from the ballot law, the House’s legislation would take unilateral oversight of the cannabis industry away from Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg, instead creating a commission appointed by several elected officials to police the new industry.
It would also merge oversight of the recreational and medical cannabis markets, establish stringent requirements for testing and pot packaging, and mandate sharp restrictions on marijuana advertising.
Growing, buying, possessing, and using limited quantities of marijuana by adults 21 and older would remain legal under the House plan.
What's a limited quantity?
“From day one, in all of our efforts, the overarching theme has been getting this right for the Commonwealth,” said Representative Mark J. Cusack, the House chairman of the Legislature’s committee on marijuana, and author of the House bill. “It is often said that you cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and what you have before you is a good omnibus bill that works for the consumers and the industry, but, more importantly, the people of the Commonwealth.”
Yeah, I've heard that before.
Speaking on the House floor, he said the legislation respects the will of the voters “who wanted a safe and regulated market,” while adding “common sense” public safety protections and streamlining bureaucracy so that retail sales can begin by July 2018.
After the bill’s passage, DeLeo praised the legislation.
“This bill reflects a commitment to legalizing adult-use marijuana while upholding our duty to ensure safety and effective management,” he said in a statement.
“The House placed a premium on health and safety,” he said, emphasizing product testing and security measures.
Representatives had filed more than 100 amendments, on everything from earmarking some pot tax revenue for substance-abuse education in public schools to changing the limits on how many retail store licenses a person can hold.
Black and Latino lawmakers had sharply criticized the original House bill, saying it watered down language in the ballot question aimed at ensuring that communities disproportionately hurt by the war on drugs can fully participate in the new legal industry.
In response, the House adopted an amendment restoring that ballot language. Legislators also added wording that would mandate regulators “adopt diversity licensing goals that provide meaningful participation of communities disproportionately affected by cannabis prohibition and enforcement, including minority business enterprises.”
Representative Russell Holmes, a Mattapan Democrat, who had been critical of the underlying bill, said he was encouraged by Wednesday’s changes. “I think that the bill was substantially improved with the equity language,” he said after the measure’s passage.
Among the other amendments passed Wednesday: measures to boost local Massachusetts pot farmers, clarify oversight of the hemp industry, refine restrictions against pot shops near schools, and mandate marijuana regulators create energy and environmental standards for marijuana farms, which can consume vast amounts of power and water.
The original House bill allowed regulators “to conduct warrantless searches” of pot shops and farms, wording that enraged legalization advocates, but an amendment Wednesday evening changed that language to “regulatory inspections.”
The Senate is set to take up its own version of the legislation Thursday. A draft version of that bill diverged from the House one on several fronts.
It would leave the lower tax rate in place and maintain that local voters, not elected officials, decide whether to ban pot shops from their city or town.
The advocates who proposed the legalization ballot question have formally endorsed the Senate measure, while decrying the House effort as fundamentally flawed.
“We need to make sure this bill is killed!” said Will Luzier, who served as the referendum’s campaign manager, at an anti-House bill rally in Boston Wednesday.
After the Senate passes its version, the two chambers will try to reconcile differences in a closed-door conference committee with a handful of senators and representatives, but they won’t have much time. Legislators face a self-imposed June 30 deadline for sending a bill to Governor Charlie Baker’s desk so that retail pot shops can open, as expected, by July 2018.
HA-HA-HA!
It will probably take a new pot oversight agency at least one year to get off the ground and begin vetting and approving recreational licenses, experts say.
So, unless Massachusetts bureaucracy moves with amazing alacrity, it would be very difficult to change many key aspects of the law after next month, if retail stores are still to open in summer 2018.
Already, in December, with no public hearings and no formal public notice, lawmakers changed the likely opening date of retail pot shops from January to July 2018, but they insist they won’t delay recreational marijuana sales any further.
Just wait a minute.
--more--"
"Mass. Senate passes marijuana bill" by Jim O’Sullivan Globe Staff June 22, 2017
The Massachusetts Senate passed a bill Thursday making targeted adjustments to the voter-mandated marijuana legalization law — but differing starkly from a more extensive replacement measure approved by the House just a day earlier.
Senators voted 30-5 in favor of their version, which now heads to a time-pressured conference committee with the House. Legislative leaders have vowed to send a bill to Governor Charlie Baker by next Friday to allow retail shops to open by July 2018.
They had five months after rushing through the pay raise.
Unlike the House, “we are not starting from scratch,” Senator Patricia Jehlen, a Somerville Democrat who cochairs the marijuana policy committee, told colleagues Thursday morning.
Advocates of the new law cheered the Senate version.
Attention will now turn toward the as-yet-unnamed conference committee, where the two chambers’ negotiators have a compressed window of just over a week to meet their self-imposed deadline. The House and Senate have done little to hide their disagreements over how best to refine the legalization law, and senators in both parties Thursday issued floor remarks about respecting the will of the voters that could have been read as thinly masked swipes at their counterparts on the other side of the capitol.
Senate minority leader Bruce E. Tarr, a Gloucester Republican, said lawmakers owed voters “fidelity to what they have ordained by their vote.”
Several senators said they wanted to avoid what has happened in other states, where retail shops have clustered in low-income communities. Like some counterparts in the House, several senators said they wanted the bill to create protections for such communities and those of color.
Jehlen said the version she brought to the floor sought to “remedy the damage to people in communities that have been damaged by the drug war.”
Jehlen also recited a laundry list of times that the public had evinced support for expanded access to marijuana and lawmakers failed to respond. Each time, she said, voters then pressed their case at the ballot box: first with decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana in 2008, then medicinal marijuana in 2012, and finally last fall with legalization.
Thursday’s session stretched over 10 hours, punctuated by long recesses. Senators did not vote to pass the legislation until after 9 p.m.
One amendment adopted by the Senate decrees that any record of a marijuana-related offense that is no longer consider a crime would be eligible to be sealed. As the bill neared passage, the Senate on a voice vote added an amendment allowing courts to expunge offenders’ Class D possession records. Another established penalties for adults who provide marijuana or related products to minors.
Senators batted back an effort by Senator Jamie Eldridge, an Acton Democrat, to preserve majority control of the Cannabis Control Commission for state Treasurer Deborah Goldberg. The House stripped Goldberg of majority control and the Senate’s version followed suit.
Despite Eldridge’s exhortation that his amendment would provide “more transparency and accountability,” the Senate rejected it on a voice vote, meaning no senator was on the record. Goldberg, a Brookline Democrat, has publicly criticized legislators’ maneuver to diminish her authority.
Due to a $23 million renovation of their chamber, senators are holding sessions in a State House auditorium, where the acoustics sometimes rendered the debate difficult to hear.
They ran over budget by about $9 million.
Can you hear 'em now?
A visibly exasperated Rosenberg urged members in the late afternoon, after an extended recess had stretched past two hours, to quiet down, and reminded the lawmakers that they are in the first year of a two-year legislative session.
“You really have to help us here or we’re never getting out of here. And, by the way, we have another year in this room. Knock yourselves out.”
--more--"
Maybe rewriting the thing was a bad idea from the start:
"Rewriting the Mass. pot law is a bad idea, but legislators are doing it anyway" by Scot Lehigh Globe Columnist June 22, 2017
It wasn’t marijuana smoke the Braintree rep was exhaling. No indeed. It was sanctimony, pure and simple. Their legislation might not be popular, said Representative Mark Cusack, House chairman of the Marijuana Policy Committee, but then, he and his fellow House members knew an important truth: “What is popular is not always right and what is right is not always popular.”
Meanwhile, heaven help the poor legal-marijuana activist who might have wanted to follow the House effort at completely overhauling their ballot law on TV. The “debate” was long periods of silent recesses, in which members milled about the rostrum like confused tourists consulting a map, punctuated by brief moments in which the presiding officer — for much of the time, rascally Western Mass. patronage king Thomas Petrolati — gaveled through leadership-approved amendments that were neither explained nor debated.
Ah, that House-style democracy!
Now, it is true that ballot questions sometimes need some adjustment, but the wishes of the voters as expressed on the ballot also deserve a certain respect and deference. Like, say, perhaps waiting to see if a ballot law actually works before subjecting it to a complete rewrite.
Here, however, lawmakers have already delayed the starting date for legal marijuana sales. Now the House wants to repeal the entirety of the actual ballot law and replace it with a new plan. That fairly defines high-handed. No wonder, then, that the folks who actually worked to get marijuana legalized were outside the State House this week protesting against the House bill.
“Essentially they are saying the will of the voters be damned,” said Will Luzier, who managed the ballot campaign.
Credit where it’s due: The Senate prefers a much lighter approach.
“We are attempting to respect the will of the voters,” Senator Pat Jehlen, the Senate marijuana chair, said as Senate debate started Thursday. “We need to restore some trust in government by not overriding the will of the people.”
They do it all the time!!!!
And why, exactly, does it make sense to yank the ability to reject pot shops from local voters and give it to municipal officials, who almost by electoral nature are marijuana-averse? That’s directly contrary to the ballot law’s intent.
“In no other states have we seen anything like this,” says Jim Borghesani, another leader in the ballot-question quest. “We are the only state that delayed the timeline and we are the only state that is looking at a major legislative rewrite. So it is not a flattering distinction for Massachusetts.”
No, but it does suggest a nifty new House motto: “On Beacon Hill, we know better.”
--more--"
Is there not one honest man (or woman) in Ma$$achu$etts?
"On Beacon Hill, Deb Goldberg stands alone" by Frank Phillips Globe Staff June 22, 2017
State Treasurer Deb Goldberg didn’t get her reputation for being a political pariah with the establishment by playing nice with the power brokers on Beacon Hill.
Goldberg has built a reputation at the State House — honed through her years as a Brookline selectwoman and an activist in the state Democratic party — for taking no prisoners when she feels political players are not bending to her interests.
Yeah, she's one tough bully, 'er, cookie.
One example that still burns: The treasurer sent chills through the political world when she caused a young woman working at an adoption agency nonprofit, which the treasurer chaired, to lose her job. Goldberg used her position as the state treasurer-elect — including access to state employment documents — to alert the agency that the young woman was seeking a job in the treasury’s office.
Goldberg’s problem is that the political empire is now striking back.
The biggest blow came this month when House leaders unveiled a bill that rewrites the voter-approved 2016 marijuana legalization ballot question. So far, Senate and House leaders vary drastically on proposed changes to the state’s pot law, but the two disparate bills have one big thing in common — Goldberg is sidelined.
Both the Senate and House bills would gut the treasurer’s unilateral control of the Cannabis Control Commission, denying her the ability to reign over a newly created tax-fattened bureaucracy that is expected to be rife with patronage hirings and contracts.
Why would the pot agency be any different than the others, 'eh?
The House-approved legislation outlines it best. It gives the agency the power to assemble an administrative staff; contract with consultants; create a legal team and a public relations crew; and hire technical advisers, investigators, auditors, and law enforcement agents, but it strips from the ballot law the language that gave the state treasurer full control of the commission. Instead, the treasurer, who would have headed a three-member commission, would now share power with the governor and the attorney general in a five-member commission.
Goldberg, who declined a request for an interview, didn’t help her case when the Lottery Commission, which she chairs, indicated earlier this year it might move its headquarters out of Braintree, where it has been located for decades.
The House chair of the Marijuana Policy Committee is Democrat Mark Cusack of — you guessed it — Braintree.
That was a no Brain(tree)er.
--more--"
Would they deny this guy?
"Family: Peter Tosh’s Boston son in coma after NJ jail beating" by Josh Cornfield Associated Press June 22, 2017
TRENTON, N.J. — The family of the late reggae icon and marijuana activist Peter Tosh is seeking answers after they say Tosh’s son was left in a coma following an attack in a New Jersey jail, where he was serving a six-month sentence on pot possession charges.
Jawara McIntosh of Boston has been hospitalized since suffering traumatic brain injuries in the attack in February at the Bergen County jail, where he was after pleading guilty to marijuana possession, his family said.
McIntosh performed under the stage name Tosh1. His father was a Jamaican-born musician and activist who started the Wailers along with Bob Marley. His 1976 hit ‘‘Legalize It’’ remains a rallying cry for those pushing to make marijuana legal.
McIntosh is also a pro-marijuana activist and performed the song outside of the New Jersey statehouse in April 2014 during a rally pushing for state and federal lawmakers to legalize or decriminalize marijuana.
Attorney Jasmine Rand said Thursday the family has filed a notice that it plans to sue the county and also wants the US Justice Department to investigate. McIntosh is hospitalized in Boston and remains unresponsive and in a coma, suffering from brain damage, she said.
‘‘My heart cries not knowing what happened to my son,’’ said his mother, Melody Cunningham. ‘‘Not being able to talk to him because of the condition that he’s in. [I’m] trying to be strong for him, I have to be strong for him.’’
His sister, Niambe McIntosh, said that they haven’t been given any solid information about what happened. Rand said the county hasn’t been forthcoming about providing evidence about what happened.
A spokesman for the Bergen County sheriff’s office said he was not immediately able to comment Thursday.
McIntosh was arrested in New Jersey in June 2013 after police said they found more than 65 pounds of marijuana in the trunk of his rental car.
His family says that he is a Rastafarian like his father and was fighting for marijuana legalization. Tosh was killed in Jamaica in 1987 during a home invasion robbery.
‘‘A lot of his music is inspired by the Rastafarian culture, by getting the truth out there. My father was a human rights activist and all of his music was about uplifting and educating people about some of the conditions out there,’’ Niambe McIntosh said. ‘‘But also my father was an activist for the legalization of cannabis. That’s also another avenue that my brother Jawara kind of walked into and upheld. He was also an advocate for legalization of cannabis.’’
Rastafarians regard cannabis as a sacrament.
McIntosh has four children, including an 11-year-old daughter who performed a song she wrote for him at his hospital bedside, Niambe McIntosh said.
‘‘When you’re faced with such a travesty you have to find strength and hope,’’ she said.
And justice, right?
--more--"
"Behind closed doors, lawmakers work on plan to rewrite pot law" by Joshua Miller Globe Staff June 26, 2017
The fate of marijuana legalization is now in the hands of a half-dozen lawmakers meeting in secret.
Those legislators’ first action on Monday was to kick out members of the news media, close the door, and begin their deliberations.
They were told “don’t take it personally,” and as soon as the pre$$ was gone they lit up.
Hashing out differences in secret has long been the norm, but both are expected to rubber-stamp the final agreement. Responding to a question from a reporter on Monday, House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo said that, for the most part, the public will be “served very well” by legislators ironing out differences on the ballot law rewrite in secret.
Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg did not directly answer the question.
In December, with no public hearings and no formal public notice, a few lawmakers passed a measure to delay the likely opening date for recreational marijuana stores in Massachusetts by half a year — from January to July 2018. They delayed in order to give themselves extra time to rewrite the voter-passed law.....
--more--"
Related:
"A medical marijuana dispensary could move in among the retail shops on Newbury Street next summer, after the Boston City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to let the project proceed. The council’s deliberations were clouded by uncertainty on Beacon Hill, where lawmakers are working on an extensive rewrite of the state’s recreational marijuana law — including provisions that spell out whether and how medical dispensaries can eventually offer recreational pot to nonpatients....."
"Massachusetts legislators, toiling in secret to finalize a rewrite of the voter-passed marijuana legalization law, hit an impasse Thursday as they tried to iron out differences between a House version that would alter major parts of the ballot measure and a Senate bill with more modest changes. Lawmakers had hoped that a final recreational marijuana bill could be voted on by all lawmakers on Friday and sent to Governor Charlie Baker’s desk by the Legislature’s self-imposed deadline of Friday night...."
Also see: Charlie Baker signs bill making changes to marijuana law
Time to celebrate:
"Couple weds in marijuana facility to back new laws" Associated Press July 04, 2017
LAS VEGAS — Cheers and long lines of tourists and residents greeted the first day of sales of recreational marijuana in Nevada on Saturday.
The state’s market for recreational marijuana is expected to outpace all others in the country because of the millions of visitors who flock to Las Vegas each year.
Veteran consumers, first-timers, twenty-somethings, and retirees were among those who defied triple-digit temperatures before they made it into stores across the Las Vegas area, some of which provided free water, live music, valet parking, and promotions on their valuable product.
Eager employees guided customers and answered questions from product potency to consumption regulations.
Some dispensaries took to social media to spread the word or tried to draw in buyers with special events. Some gave away free marijuana to their first 100 customers, and at least held a raffle for free marijuana for a year.....
That's how you hook 'em!
--more--"
I sure hope the youth don't drug and drive:
"Vermont Governor Phil Scott says he’s going to appoint a commission to study the legalization of the recreational use of marijuana in the state. Scott, a Republican, said Thursday the commission’s priorities would be to look at ways to ensure public safety and the best way to regulate marijuana. The Legislature passed a legalization bill that was vetoed by Scott because of public safety concerns (AP)."
Ben & Jerry’s wants to make CBD ice cream
It needs federal law to change first.
Boston warns restaurants over marijuana-infused meals
Really took the air out of you, didn't they?
